The 10 lakh jobs promise, on which the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) got Bihar’s youth to rally behind it in the 2020 assembly elections, will be a major challenge for the party to deliver in the alliance with Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) in the state.
During the 2020 elections, when Kumar and the RJD were at loggerheads, Kumar had termed the RJD’s promise of 10 lakh jobs as “impractical" and had questioned where the salaries for the same will come from. “Will the salary come from jail (where Lalu Prasad was lodged) or fake currency notes will be given?" Kumar had said at rallies then.
Kumar had also warned people to not fall for such “fake promises" and said there could be a “game of corruption". Tejashwi Yadav, however, opened a dedicated website for youth to send in their resumes and over 10 lakh Bihari youth applied on the website then, hoping for government jobs if the RJD came to power.
In a TV interview after being sworn in as the Deputy Chief Minister, Tejashwi Yadav has now claimed that Kumar has spoken to him about the 10 lakh jobs issue and said the CM is “serious" about it. “He has directed officers to give maximum jobs. So if not from my hands, this could happen from the CM’s hands and I will be more than happy if it happens. We will fulfill the commitment that we made of 10 lakh jobs. I had said when I will become CM…right now I am deputy CM. Let the trust vote happen, this work will happen," Yadav has said. He added that a lot will be done to get investment into Bihar as well.
The Bihar Jobs Scene
The unemployment rate in Bihar is at a high of 18.8%, against a national average of 7.7%, as per the latest CMIE date of July 2022. Only Rajasthan (19.1%), J&K (20.2%) and Haryana (26.9%) have higher unemployment rates, as per CMIE data. Bihar government’s salary budget was Rs 27,237 crore in 2021-22, and it then paid another Rs 21,817 crore in pensions.
The RJD has been saying that nearly 4.5 lakh vacancies exist in the Bihar government and they should be immediately filled though recruitment examinations while the rest of the promised jobs can be created based on skill-set of the youth who applied on the RJD website in 2020. The party says there are nearly 7 crore unemployed youth in the state and that is the reason for high migration from the state for jobs.
The JD(U) and RJD had taken pot-shots at each other in 2020 over the issue of unemployment, with the JDU saying that while it had given six lakh jobs in the first 15 years of reign of Nitish Kumar as the Chief Minister, only about 34,000 jobs were given under the RJD regime of 15 years. With the parties now together in power, giving the 10 lakh jobs as promised by the RJD will become the alliance’s major job ahead of 2024.
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